architecturelab:

Following an international competition, Foster Partners, working with museum designer Adrien Gardere, is designing a new museum for Roman artefacts in the city of Narbonne, southern France. (via Foster Partners to design Musée de la Romanitée Narbonne in Southern France)

(via expensivelife)

(via expensivelife)

massurban:

“How Building Beautiful Spaces Can Foster Environmentalism

Kaid Benfield. April 23, 2012

Can placemaking - the building or strengthening of physical community fabric to create great human habitat - be a new environmentalism? The question is posed by a provocative short essay, which I first discovered last summer. Written by Ethan Kent of the Project for Public Spaces, the article has recently resurfaced, perhaps in honor of yesterday’s celebration of Earth Day. The essay influenced my own writing last year, and I’m returning to it today because the issues Ethan has raised continue to be important.

My answer, by the way, is a qualified yes: creating the right kinds of places for people, particularly at the neighborhood scale, has indeed become a new approach to environmentalism and one to which I am deeply committed. But I qualify my answer because placemaking is by no means the only important aspect of today’s environmentalism (not that Ethan suggested that). In addition, I think the physical building of community can become even stronger as an environmental tool by becoming somewhat more explicitly environmental in its content. I’ll get into all that in a minute.

First, though, I want to explore the phrase “new environmentalism” a bit.  A decade ago, the well-known urbanist Andres Duany was kind enough to write a cover blurb for NRDC’s then-new book about smart growth, Solving Sprawl. Andres wrote, “finally, here is a book on the environment that includes the human habitat as part of nature. This may be the first text of a ‘New Environmentalism.’” I was quite honored by the flattery that our book was being considered important and new, and by the parallel language to new urbanism, bestowed by one of that movement’s pillars. Might our way of thinking – advocacy for smart, green people habitat – be earning its way to an impact on the environmental movement as significant as that brought by the new urbanists to architecture and planning?

I’ll let others judge the extent to which that has come to pass, and quite immediately proclaim that, to the extent it may have, the philosophy expressed in Solving Sprawl was neither all ours nor all new. (New urbanism wasn’t really new, either.) All that said, there was indeed something new about the environmentalism that developed in the 1990s and continues so far in this century, in that now what we are for is every bit as important as what we wish (and need) to stop. I detailed my personal version of that transition (“NIMBY to YIMBY”) in an Earth Day essay written two years ago. And people habitat – neighborhoods, cities, metropolitan regions – is every bit as important to the environment as natural habitat and wilderness. Indeed, making cities great should be seen as a key strategy for protecting wilderness. 

Today’s environmentalism incorporates the truth that, yes, we do need to build things. We need homes, workplaces, shops, schools, streets, factories, warehouses, ports, mobility, sources of energy. We need sustenance and we need commerce. To me, the excitement in environmentalism today is in making all that as good and as sustainable as possible.  While there are still far too many things we absolutely must say no to, I’ve lost patience with the old environmental approach of saying no without a clear sense of the preferable alternative. It’s OK to be idealistic, if you must (I’m more of a pragmatist, myself), but please do have a vision if you want my personal support. 

So that brings me back to Ethan’s essay about placemaking, which is eloquent on the subject: “having less impact is noble, but aspiring to have a big impact, to create the world we want starting in the place where we live, work and play, is a transformative agenda.” And so it is, because placemaking is an affirmative act, fundamentally about creating something: quite literally, making a place. At the Project for Public Spaces, where Ethan is vice president, the focus is on our public realm – our streets, our plazas and squares, our waterfronts, our parks, our markets and so on. 

These are incredibly important aspects of our people environment and, by placing them in cities and walkable neighborhoods, they become incredibly important to our natural environment as well. To the extent we use great public spaces to anchor compact people habitat, we reduce the spread of environmental harm. I would argue that the shaping of the private realm is also an important aspect of placemaking, and that we must get that part of our community fabric right, too.”

Via: The Atlantic Cities

Photo: jah_maya/Flickr

mikasavela:

A poster for Know your city, a city planning and housing exhibition, 1940, Sioux City Art Center, Iowa.

myloverarlo:

via Tangential Vancouverism. #quotes (Taken with instagram)

massurban:

“Public Transportation Systems Are Leaving People With Disabilities Behind

Sarah Laskow. May 10, 2012

To use New York City’s paratransit service—the on-demand public transportation system for people who can’t use the bus or the subway system—a customer must call one to two days in advance, between the hours of 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. She can request a pickup time or submit an appointment time by which she must reach her destination, but not both. The driver will pick her up anywhere from 30 minutes before to 30 minutes after the agreed-upon time. If anything changes, the customer must call three hours in advance to cancel the trip.

That’s more hassle than most people would put up with to visit a doctor or have dinner at a restaurant or go to the store. And that’s how the system is supposed to work. Before the Americans with Disabilities Act passed more than 20 years ago, there was no guarantee that public transit would serve disabled people at all. The ADA required paratransit service as a supplement to public transportation systems, as well as increased access on regular public transit routes for people with disabilities.

But advocates for disabled people are still fighting for better transportation options. At last count, there were 2 million people with disabilities in the United States who never leave their homes. More than a quarter—560,000 people—say that’s because of transportation difficulties. The American Association of People with Disabilities notesin a new report that only 20 percent of Amtrak stations have complied with ADA standards. Major subway systems are only required to make “key” stations accessible.

And for people with disabilities—particularly those who use wheelchairs—taxis are rarely an option. In New York City, for example, only 233 of more than 13,000 taxis are wheelchair-accessible, less than 2 percent of the city’s taxi fleet. The nonprofit Disability Rights Advocates brought a lawsuit against the city, which controls the taxi fleet through a licensing system, demanding that number be increased. Late last year, a district judge ruled that city must create a comprehensive plan for providing taxi service to the disabled. 

New York is in the middle of designing the “Taxi of Tomorrow,” a fuel-efficient cab decked out with USB ports and other luxuries. At one point, it looked like these cabs might be wheelchair-accessible, but the Mayor’s office wasn’t particularly interested in prioritizing that. Now, Comptroller John Liu (a likely candidate in next year’s mayoral election) says he’ll block the taxi contract unless all new cabs can accommodate wheelchairs. 

Part of the reason it’s so difficult for public transit system to serve people with disabilities is that they’re woefully underfunded. It’s important that cities make it possible for people to get around without cars in order to create dense neighborhoods and keep pollution down. But it’s also important that those systems don’t leave people with disabilities stranded in their homes or on a street corner, unable to get where they need to go.”

Via: GOOD Magazine

Photo: via (cc) Flickr user man pikin

massurban:

“ EDITORIAL> GETTING IT RIGHT IN THE QUEEN CITY

Alan G. Brake. May 11, 2012

America has a deep-seated anti-urban streak, which happens to dovetail, in the eyes of many, with a mistrust of government at every level. The Republican presidential primary has flared with anti-urban rhetoric, which is particularly shortsighted given the still-weak state of the economy, one in which urban areas are bouncing back faster than their rural and exurban counterparts. That cities are the country’s economic engine seems obvious almost to the point of being self-evident, so why is it still seen as politically advantageous to denigrate urban areas? And why are urbanists so bad at making the case for cities with the public?

Meet Cincinnati Mayor Mark Malloy. His mid-sized city is currently engaged in building three important, interconnected urban projects, which could bring a real spark to downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. One project will create a new mixed-use neighborhood in between the city’s riverfront stadiums, along with a generous new waterfront park. The first phase of the Banks, as it is called, is complete and the second is breaking ground within the month. The latter is a coordinated redevelopment—including renovation and new construction—of a large piece of the Over the Rhine neighborhood, just north of downtown. The third, and arguably most important, project is a long-planned and hotly contested streetcar line connecting both areas with downtown in between.

And Cincinnati is no bastion of progressive urbanism. It has long been plagued with a history of racial strife, white flight, and purse strings controlled by wealthy, exclusionary suburbs.

Malloy has been extremely effective in making the economic case for these developments as a necessary strategy for Cincinnati’s competitiveness. In a recent video for Smart Growth America, the mayor articulated his vision: “We’ve got to be able to attract and retain young people, and we’ve got to be able to attract and maintain the companies that are going to create jobs. People are looking for public transportation when they are deciding which city they want to be in. They are looking for public infrastructure to be in place. All the elements you see in larger cities that are stable, that have growing populations, we are trying to incorporate into Cincinnati so we can level the playing field.”

Malloy is making the case for Cincinnati’s urbanity, for its cityness, as a competitive advantage, something that many small and midsized cities have long scorned. He has put public space, place making, and mixed-use development at the center of his mayoral agenda. And he makes the case that it’s not downtown versus neighborhoods or city versus suburbs, but that an integrated, economically dynamic region only thrives when the center really holds.”

Via: The Architects Newspaper

Photo: AERIAL VIEW OF CINCINNATI’S WATERFRONT SHOWING THE BANKS REDEVELOPMENT ALONG THE OHIO RIVER. COURTESY CASTELLI MANAGEMENT

massurban:

In the New Jersey/ New York area? We invite you to join us for the upcoming Workable Cities Workshop: Community Development, which will focus on how public policies and socio-economic conditions have impacted local communities in the NJ/NY area.  RSVP to info@massurban.com.

invading still….

(via expensivelife)

(via expensivelife)

micasaessucasa:

Black And White Traditional Living Rooms